My power board has burned up so much of the traces that I am starting to think that I just need to take inputs and outputs of it and just redesign the power board. The guy on KLOV shelved the project and it might be the swift kick in the ass I need to do it. Maybe actually include a fuse or 2 in the design too!

The "Pinball Mind" board will have two options for power. One option includes a complete re-engineered power transformer box which includes new power supply board inside it (you send your old power transformer box and power supply board for a core credit). The other option allows you to use a common Peter Chou screw terminal power supply for the +5 volts. You use the Peter Chou supply in conjunction with the original power supply board and transformer box with the original units still providing the other voltages.

There is a website showing pictures of a guy's Fireball home model that got converted to using conventional pinball lamp sockets and switch assemblies in place of those phony microswitch units on the original machine's giant playfield circuit board:

I've heard from the developer of the Pinball Mind board for the Bally home pinball machines. He's got the first group of sample boards being fabricated right now. I think he should receive them in about 3 weeks. Then beta testing can be done.

I'm VERY slowly working on getting a set of boards developed to drop into these machines. The original boards were junk, and it really scares me where they cut corners on it. I'm behind schedule on this by a longshot as I was hoping to have a test board in my game by now, but it didn't happen. Soon hopefully, soon.

That is good news, but I see no mention of it on Marco's website. Any idea on pricing?

Originally, "Nightmare Tony" (the late Tony Gonzales, the Pinball Mind creator) had envisioned selling this with a Peter Chou screw terminal switching regulator power supply kit. The new power supply would handle the +5 volts for the Pinball Mind logic board and +12 volts for the amplifier section of the board. The main weakness of the home model Bally pinballs was the cheapo power supply that had NO overvoltage protection. When any component on the original power supply failed, usually a catastrophic failure followed with several other components going bad too. When that happened, +22 volts (solenoid power) would get applied to the +5 circuit and fry the cpu board. Tony also envisioned the need for a decent regulated +12 volts for those people who wanted to mod/upgrade their home model machines with things like lighted flipper buttons.

The main thing was that the new Peter Chou power supply would supplement the original power supply board and power transformer. The original power supply board would only be providing solenoid voltage and switched illumination voltage. With the Peter Chou handling +5 and +12 volts, there's no way the power supply could fry the new board.

Tony had also thought of adding fuses to the series 1 transformer assembly and replacing those crappy "push-to-reset" circuit breakers on the series 2 transformer assembly with conventional fuses for reliability.

Thanks for all that info. I've seen your name pop up on a few different boards/threads when I was looking for answers.

I was following Tony's website and emailed El Dorado games, the company he listed that would sell the board. They told me the project had been dumped off to Marco Specialties, and after an email with them I found out this"We have spoke with the gentleman who was originally in charge of this project and he was talking about turning it over to us. I believe we have the plans and everything and are working on this board now. It will probably be mid February until we have these available"They could not tell me anything on price.

I have a Bally Home Fireball. The backglass lights powerup and the flippers work, but that's it. Nothing on the playfield works and no scores are registered. I was hoping this new board would be an easy and not too costly fix.

John Robertson in Vancouver, B.C. (Canada) has just announced he has a replacement cpu board available NOW for the Bally home model pinballs Series 2 machines (Series 1 board coming in a couple of months). Here's his announcement:

Finally, after trying to get this off the ground for over ten years Ihave a solution to the failing 3850/3870 CPUs and support ICs for theBally Home Pinball games.

Just finished the rough test today, and the replacement part covers bothversions of CPU with a PCB needed for the older 3850, and the original3870 socketed for the second version of the MPU. This uses the laterversion software but all of the game functions (including sounds) arepresent as per my test machine - a Captain Fantastic (home) machine.

Immediately available for the single chip (3870) series games @ $75USDplus shipping.

And, in a month or two, I should have something ready that folks caninstall for the three chip (3850/51) series games that will cost around$125.

I picked up this Fireball earlier this week that was pretty damn cheap and SUPER clean but didn't work. 5v and 12v were dead and R101 position in the 22v section of the power supply was charred like a mofo. After reading this thread I ended up wiring in a switcher to handle the 5v & 12v and rebuilt the 22v section with new transistor, caps, diodes and resistor. Once all that was done, the damn thing fired right up and the ball was ejected.

All was well except the pop bumpers were awful. Left one worked 85% of the time an right one worked 15% of the time which was determined to have a bad micro switch. The problem with the set up is the spoon switches are mounted to a big pcb under the play field and conventional pop/spoon leafs would not have worked without major modification.

Stock pcb mounted switch.

Got the idea in my head to use a couple williams leaf switches from a defender panel I had kickin around. Cut the spoon portion off the arm of the micro switch and soldered it to the switch that I had bent.

Switches installed.

PCB back in place with switch wires soldered right to board.

Game is actually pretty fun when you have pop bumpers that work 100% of the time.

I had an idea that it looks like it would be possible to 'shoehorn' in a Gottlieb spoon switch assembly such as GTB-22704 or GTB-22704 which are available at Pinball Resource. These are small enough that they look like they would fit in this application.

Updating this old thread. The original designer of the "Pinball Mind" board passed away from cancer several years ago. His work, drawings, designs, etc were turned over to Marco Specialties who promptly did absolutely nothing and shelved it. So that's how things sit right now.

If anyone would like to design new modern boards for the Bally home model pinball machines, PLEASE DO IT. A modern replacement board is sorely needed. John Robertson at flippers.com has made some replacement cpu chips to bring the original boards back to life.

I picked up this Fireball earlier this week that was pretty damn cheap and SUPER clean but didn't work. 5v and 12v were dead and R101 position in the 22v section of the power supply was charred like a mofo. After reading this thread I ended up wiring in a switcher to handle the 5v & 12v and rebuilt the 22v section with new transistor, caps, diodes and resistor. Once all that was done, the damn thing fired right up and the ball was ejected.

All was well except the pop bumpers were awful. Left one worked 85% of the time an right one worked 15% of the time which was determined to have a bad micro switch. The problem with the set up is the spoon switches are mounted to a big pcb under the play field and conventional pop/spoon leafs would not have worked without major modification.

Stock pcb mounted switch.

Got the idea in my head to use a couple williams leaf switches from a defender panel I had kickin around. Cut the spoon portion off the arm of the micro switch and soldered it to the switch that I had bent.

Switches installed.

PCB back in place with switch wires soldered right to board.

Game is actually pretty fun when you have pop bumpers that work 100% of the time.

Those would work, but with major modification to the pcb (cutting notches and adding jumpers). There is not enough clearance to get a conventional spoon switch in there, which is why I went with a williams leaf with the crazy bend so I didn't have to hack up anything. If you look at the pic in my Evel Knievel home model thread you can see bally rotated the pop assemblies a complete 180 so that standard spoon switches could be used.